altitude in the neighbourhood of that London terminus which is at once
nearest the sea and the Promised Land. Immediately above the flat is a
spacious roof, which affords a pleasant retreat in the cool of the
evening and commands what the agents call an extensive prospect, and
where, at most hours, toy dogs may be met. The flat itself consists of a
number of rooms the walls of which are covered with photographs of men,
women, and children, almost as thickly as the pages of a schoolboy's
album are covered with stamps. There are more men than women, and more
women than children. The men have obsolete beards; several of the women
seem to be sisters, and have been taken together with their heads
inclining towards each other at an affectionate angle, which, although
affectionate, does not render the thought impossible that each sister
secretly is convinced that she is the handsomer. There are also sets of
children graduated like organ pipes. These photographs not only hang on
the walls but they swarm in frames about the mantelpieces and the
occasional tables. The occasional tables are so numerous and varied in
size that one might imagine this their stud farm.
The beginning of my tenancy was marked by a tragedy. The larder window
having been left open by the previous occupants, a large slate-coloured
pigeon, with schemes for a family, had made a nest and laid an egg in
it, and, at the very moment when I suddenly opened the door, was
preparing to lay another. To this achievement I personally should have
had no objection; but the porter, who was showing me round, and who has
a sense of decorum more proper to such apartments, had other views, and
before I could interfere he had removed the egg, brushed away the nest,
and closed the window. That ended his share of the drama; but mine was
to begin, for ever since that day the pigeon, with a depth of
reproachfulness in its eyes that is extremely distressing, has sat on
the kitchen window-sill making desperate efforts to get in, so that I
creep about feeling like Herod. During Baby Week it was almost
unbearable. Even when I am far from the kitchen I can hear its plaintive
injured cooing.
The flat is conspicuous in possessing, in addition to numerous other
advantages, such as a night porter to work the lift, who is never
visible, and a day porter who, having been forbidden by the powers that
be to use the lift before two o'clock in the afternoon, scrupulously
obeys the new regulation, except when he has to ascend to an upper floor
himself: the flat has, in addition to these advantages, windows that
refuse to be lifted by any but a Hercules, and doors (ten in all) not
one of which will remain open except by artificial means. Whether or not
this is a peculiarity of Westminster architecture I cannot say, but all
the doors are alike. They each quickly but remorselessly close, yet so
gently that the latch does not catch, and every breath of draught (and
we by no means stop at breaths) sways them noisily to and fro with a
sound that is excessively irritating to the nerves. I have therefore
either to go to the door and fasten it or find something with which to
fix it open. Normally, I use a chair or a weight from the kitchen
scales; but two of the rooms--the drawing-room, where the occasional
tables are most fecund, and the dining-room, where I do everything but
dine--are supplied with door-stops of their own, consisting each of an
elephant's foot mounted with brass. Picture me then, the most Occidental
of men and so long a devotee of the study and the shelf as to be less of
a big-game hunter than any one you could imagine, moving about this
intensely sophisticated flat carrying from room to room the foot of a
mammoth of the Indian jungle or the African forest (I don't know which)
in order to prevent a London door from banging. Imperial Caesar's destiny
was not less exalted or more incongruous.
If there were four of these feet I should be more at ease. But there are
only two of them, and I have been to the Zoo often enough to know that
elephants are quadrupeds. Where then are the other two? That is the
question which is wearing me out. I lie awake at night, wondering, and
then, falling into an uneasy sleep, hear a heavy stumbling tread on the
stairs and wake in terror expecting the door to burst open and the other
half of the elephant to advance upon me demanding its lost feet. It is
always a dreadful nightmare, but never more so than when the mammoth not
only towers up grey and threatening, but coos like an exiled pigeon.
ON SECRET PASSAGES
I was hearing the other day of an old house in Sussex where, while doing
some repairs, the builders' men chanced on the mouth of an underground
passage which they traced for two miles. Why should that discovery be
interesting? Why is everything to do with underground passages so
interesting? It is, I suppose, because they are usually secret, and the
very word secret, no matter how applied (except perhaps to treaties) is
alluring: secret drawers, secret cupboards, secret chambers; but the
secret passage is best, because it leads from one place to another, and
either war or love called it into being: war or love, or, as in the case
of priests' hiding holes, religious persecution, which is a branch of
war.
Nothing can deprive the secret passage of its glamour: not all the
Tubes, or subways, or river tunnelling, through which we pass so
naturally day after day. Any private excavation is exciting; to enter a
dark cellar, even, carries a certain emotion. How mysterious are crypts!
How awesome are the catacombs of Rome! How it brings back the lawless,
turbulent past of Florence merely to walk through that long passage
(not underground but overground, yet no less dramatic for that) which,
passing above the Ponte Vecchio, unites the Pitti and the Uffizi and
made it possible, unseen by the Florentines, to transfer bodies of armed
men from one side of the Arno to the other!
It was the underground passage idea which gave the Druce Case such
possibilities of mystery and romance. That a duke should masquerade as
an upholsterer was in itself an engaging idea; but without the
underground passage connecting Baker Street with Cavendish Square the
story was no more than an ordinary feuilleton. I shall always regret
that it was not true; and even now some one ought to take it in hand and
make a real romance of it, with the double-lived nobleman leaving his
own home so regularly every morning (by the trap door), doffing his
coronet and robes and changing _en route_ somewhere under Wigmore
Street, and appearing unseen (by another trap door) in the Bazaar, all
smug and punctual and rubbing his hands. It would be not only thrilling,
but such a satire on ducal dulness. And then the great Law Court scenes,
the rival heirs, the impassioned counsel, the vast sums at stake, the
sanction of the judge to open the grave, and finally the discovery that
there was no body there after all--nothing but bricks--and the fantastic
story really was fact! There has been no better plot since "Monte
Cristo," and that, you remember, would be nothing had not the Abbe Faria
excavated the secret passage from his cell through which Edmond was able
to re-enter the world and start upon his career of symmetrical
vengeance.
What, of course, gave such likelihood to the Druce allegations was the
circumstance that the Duke of Portland spent so much of his life at
Welbeck underground. A man who is known to do that must expect to be the
subject of romantic exaggerations.
Another reason for wishing the Druce story to be true is that, if it
were true, if one aristocrat thus duplicated and enriched his life,
others also would do so; for there are no single instances; and this
means that London would be honey-combed by secret underground passages
constructed to promote these entertaining deceptions, and shopping would
become an absorbing pastime, for we should never know with whom we were
chaffering. But alas...!
Just as an ordinary desk takes on a new character directly one is told
that it has a secret drawer, so does even a whisper of a secret passage
transfigure the most commonplace house. Arriving in Gloucester not so
very long ago, and needing a resting-place for the night, I
automatically chose the hotel which claimed, in the advertisement, to
date from the fourteenth century and possess an underground passage to
the cathedral. The fact that, as the young lady in the office assured
me, the passage, if it ever existed, no longer is accessible, made very
little difference: the idea of it was the attraction and determined the
choice of the inn. The Y. M. C. A. headquarters at Brighton on the Old
Steyne ceases to be under the dominion of those initials--four letters
which, for all their earnest of usefulness, are as far removed from the
suggestion of clandestine intrigue as any could be--and becomes a
totally different structure when one is told that when, long before its
conversion, Mrs. Fitzherbert lived there, an underground passage existed
between it and the Pavilion for the use of the First Gentleman in
Europe. Whether it is fact or fancy I cannot say, but that the Pavilion
has a hidden staircase and an underground passage to the Dome I happen
to know. A hidden staircase has hardly fewer adventurous potentialities
than a secret passage. I was told of one at Greenwich Hospital: in the
wing built by Charles II. is a secret staircase in the wall leading to
the apartments set apart for (need I say?) Mistress Eleanor Gwynne?
These rooms, such is the deteriorating effect of modernity, are now
offices.
LITTLE MISS BANKS
To many people wholly free from superstition, except that, after
spilling the salt, they are careful to throw a little over the left
shoulder, and do not walk under ladders unless with crossed thumbs, and
refuse to sit thirteen at table, and never bring May blossoms into the
house--to these people, otherwise so free from superstition, it would
perhaps be surprising to know what great numbers of their
fellow-creatures resort daily to such a black art as fortune-telling by
the cards.
Yet quite respectable, God-fearing, church-going old ladies, and
probably old gentlemen too, treasure this practice, to say nothing of
younger and therefore naturally more frivolous folk; and many make the
consultation of the two-and-fifty oracles a morning habit.
Particularly women. Those well-thumbed packs of cards that we know so
well are not wholly dedicated to "Patience," I can assure you.
All want to be told the same thing: what the day will bring forth. But
each searcher into the dim and dangerous future has, of course,
individual methods--some shuffling seven times and some ten, and so
forth, and all intent upon placating the elfish goddess, Caprice.
There is little Miss Banks, for example.
Nothing would induce little Miss Banks to leave the house in the morning
without seeing what the cards promised her, and so open and
impressionable are her mind and heart that she is still interested in
the colour of the romantic fellow whom the day, if kind, is to fling
across her path. The cards, as you know, are great on colours, all men
being divided into three groups; dark (which has the preference), fair,
and middling. Similarly for you, if you can get little Miss Banks to
read your fate (but you must of course shuffle the pack yourself), there
are but three kinds of charmers: dark (again the most fascinating and to
be desired), fair, and middling.
It is great fun to watch little Miss Banks at her necromancy. She takes
it so earnestly, literally wrenching the future's secrets from their
lair.
"A letter is coming to you from some one," she says. "An important
letter."
And again, "I see a voyage over water."
Or very seriously, "There's a death."
You gasp.
"No, it's not yours. A fair woman's."
You laugh. "Only a fair woman's!" you say. "Go on."
But the cards have not only ambiguities, but strange reticences.
"Oh," little Miss Banks will say, her eyes large with excitement,
"there's a payment of money and a dark man."
"Good," you say.
"But I can't tell," she goes on, "whether you pay it to him or he pays
it to you."
"That's a nice state of things," you say, becoming indignant. "Surely
you can tell."
"No, I can't."
You begin to go over your dark acquaintances who might owe you money,
and can think of none.
You then think of your dark acquaintances to whom you owe money and are
horrified by their number.
"Oh, well," you say, "the whole thing's rubbish, anyway."
Little Miss Banks's eyes dilate with pained astonishment.
"Rubbish!"--and she begins to shuffle again.
GENTLEMEN BOTH
Not all of us have the best manners always about us. The fortunate are
they whose reaction is instant; but those also are fortunate who, after
the first failure--during the conflict between, say, natural and
acquired feelings--can recapture their best, too.
At a certain country house where a shooting party was assembled a
picture stood on an easel in a corner of the dining-room. It was a
noticeable picture by reason of its beauty and also by reason of a gash
in the canvas. Coffee was on the table when one of the guests, looking
round the walls, observed it for the first time, and, drawing his host's
attention to its excellence, asked who was the painter; and the host,
who was an impulsive, hearty fellow, full of money, after supplying the
information and corroborating the justice of the criticism, remarked to
the whole company, "Now here's a sporting offer. You see that cut across
the paint in the middle"--pointing it out as he spoke--"well, I'll give
any one a thousand pounds who can guess how it was done."
They all rose and clustered before the easel; for a thousand pounds are
worth having a try for, even when one is rich--as most of them were.
"It was done only last week," the host continued, "and it was such a
queer business that I don't intend to have it repaired. Now then, all of
you, a thousand of the best for the correct answer."
He rubbed his hands and chuckled. It was a sure thing for him, and there
would be a lot of fun in the suggestions.
The guests having re-examined the cut with minuteness, one by one,
seated themselves again, and pencils and paper were provided so that the
various possible solutions might be written down. The real business then
began--no sound but pencils writing and the host chuckling.
Now it happened that one of the party, a year or so before, had seen
somewhere in Yorkshire a picture with a not dissimilar rent, caused, he
had been told, by a panic-stricken bird which had blundered into the
room and couldn't get out again. Remembering this, and remembering also
that history sometimes repeats itself, he wrote on his piece of paper
that, according to his guess, the canvas was torn by a bird which had
flown into the room and lost its head.
All the suggestions having been written down, the host called on their
writers to read them, a jolly, confident smile lighting up his features,
which grew more jolly and more confident as one after another incorrect
solution was tendered.
And then came the turn of the man who had remembered about the bird, and
who happened to be the last of all. "My guess is," he read out, "that
the picture was damaged by a bird."
There was a roar of laughter, which gradually subsided when it was
observed that the host was very far from joining in it. In fact, his
face not only had lost all its good humour, but was white and tense.
When there was silence he said, with a certain biting shortness:
"Somebody must have told you."
"Nobody told me," was the reply. "But you don't really mean to say I've
guessed right?"
"If you call it a guess--yes," said the host, whose mortification had
become painful to witness.
"Well," said the other quickly and pleasantly, "'guess' perhaps isn't
the right word, and, of course, I shouldn't therefore claim the reward.
You see----," and he then explained how he had remembered the odd
experience in Yorkshire, and in default of any inventiveness of his own
had used it. "So, of course," he added, rising and moving towards the
window, "the offer is off. Remembering isn't guessing; quite the
reverse. What a gorgeous moon!"
The others also rose, only too willingly, for the situation had become
trying; the matter dropped, at any rate as a theme of general
conversation; and gradually and uncomfortably bed-time was reached.
Several of the party were at breakfast the next morning when their host
made his first appearance; and they noticed that he had regained his
customary gay serenity. Walking up to the guest whose memory had been so
embarrassing, he handed him a slip of paper.
"I'm sorry, old man," he said, "to have been in such a muddle last
night, but the accuracy of that shot of yours dazed me. Of course the
offer stands. All this cheque needs is for you to fill in the name of
whatever hospital or charity you prefer."
"Thanks," said the other as he put it in his pocket-book.
ON EPITAPHS
Not long ago I was staying in a village where the shortest cut to the
inn lay through the churchyard, and passing and repassing so often I
came to know the dead inhabitants of the place almost better than the
living. Not with the penetrating knowledge of the author of "Spoon River
Anthology"--that very extraordinary and understanding book,--but in a
kindly superficial way. Indeed, considering that they were total
strangers and their acquaintance not now to be made by any but the
followers of those doughty knights of the round (or square) seance
table, Sir Oliver and Sir Conan, some of these dead people were absurdly
often in my thoughts; but that was because of their names. Such names!
Many of course were no longer legible, for Father Time had either
obliterated them with his patient finger, dipped now in lichen and now
in moss, or upon them his tears had fallen too steadily. But many
remained and some of them were wonderful. Has it ever been explained why
the dead have more remarkable names than the living? Did any one ever
meet "in the form" a Lavender Wiseways? Yet there was a Lavender
Wiseways lying beneath one of those stones. There was her sister too,
lying close beside--Lavinia Wiseways. Neither had married; but then how
could they have performed a deed which would have lost them such
distinction! And who now exchanges market greetings, with a gaitered
gentleman named Paradine Ebb? Yet once there was a Paradine Ebb, farmer,
not such a great distance from London, to shake by the hand, and chat
to, and buy fat stock from, and, I hope, share a cordial glass with. And
who--but if I continue I shall betray the village's name, and that is
against good manners. Too many real names get into print in these
inquisitive days.
It was not however of strange dead names that I was thinking when I took
up my pen, but of the epitaphs on the tombstones, sometimes so brief and
simple, sometimes so long and pompous, and almost always withholding
everything of real importance about the occupants of the narrow cells
beneath and almost always affecting to despise the precious gift of
life. Why should not some one, greatly daring, go so far as to bid the
mason engrave a tribute to the world that is being left behind? Would
that be so impious? There is no indication that any of these dead ever
enjoyed a moment.
Something like this, for instance--
HERE LIES
HENRY ROBINSON
WHO LIVED IN THE BELIEF--AND,
WITH MANY FAILURES, DID HIS
BEST TO ACT OF TO IT--THAT IF
YOU SPEND YOUR TIME IN TRYING
TO MAKE THINGS A LITTLE EASIER
AND MERRIER IN THIS WORLD, THE
NEXT CAN TAKE CARE OF ITSELF.
The whole insincere suggestion of most churchyards now is that life has
been spent in a vale of tears: a long tribulation, merely a preparation
for another and better world. But we know that that is not usually the
case, and we know that many lives, although unrelated to graveyard ideas
of decorum and insurance, are happier than not. There is in the God's
Acre of which I am writing more than one appeal to the living to be wary
of earthly serenity: surely a very unfair line for the dead to take and
not unremindful of the fable of the fox and his tail. An elaborate stone
close by the lych gate has a series of dreary couplets warning the
passer-by that the next grave to be dug may be his; and on the
assumption that he is being too happy he is adjured to a morbid
thoughtfulness. The dead might be kinder than that, more generous, more
altruistic! I should like a headstone to bear some such motto as
"DIE AND LET LIVE."
But not only do the epitaphs suggest that life below is a snare; they
are by no means too encouraging about the life above. The spirit they
proclaim is a very poor one. Nothing can make death attractive; but even
if some golden-mouthed advocate should arise whose eloquence half
persuaded, the churchyard would beat him: the damp of it, the gloom of
it, the mouldiness of it, the pathetic unconvincing efforts at
resignation which the slabs record! We ought to be braver; more
heartening to others. A rector who allowed none but cheerful epitaphs
would be worth his tithes.
Would there be any very impossible impropriety in such an inscription as
this--
HERE LIES
JOHN SMITH
WHO FOUND EARTH PLEASANT AND
REJOICED IN ITS BEAUTIES AND ENJOYED
ITS SAVOURS; WHO LOVED
AND WAS LOVED; AND WHO WOULD
FAIN GO ON LIVING. HE DIED
RELUCTANTLY, BUT WISHES WELL TO
ALL WHO SURVIVE HIM.
CARPE DIEM.
Reading that, the stranger would not necessarily (I hope) be transformed
into a detrimental Hedonist.
And now and then a human foible might be recorded by the stonemason
without risk of undermining society's foundations. When our friends are
dead why should we not disclose a little? Some secrets are better out.
Here for example--
HERE LIES
(in no expectation of immortality)
THOMAS BROWN
HE WAS NO FRIEND OF THE
CHURCH, BUT HE PAID HIS WAY,
INTERFERED WITH NONE OF HIS
NEIGHBOURS, AND HIS WORD WAS
HIS BOND.
What would happen if Thomas Brown's friends paid for such lapidary style
as that? Would the world totter? Again--
HERE LIES
MARY JONES
THE WIFE OF WILLIAM JONES.
HONOUR HER MEMORY, FOR SHE
WAS LENIENT WHEN HER HUSBAND
WAS IN LIQUOR.
I should also like to see memorial verses beginning:
Physicians sore
Long time I bore.
IN AND ABOUT LONDON
I
A LONDON THRILL
The scene was Gerrard Street: a rather curious thoroughfare notable for
possessing three or four restaurants dear to Bohemia, the great West End
telephone exchange, the homes of Dryden and Edmund Burke, a number of
cinema offices, and many foreign inhabitants.
The time was three o'clock in the afternoon.
In the middle were two or three big vans, loading or unloading and
filling the roadway, thus cutting the street into two so effectively
that I, approaching from the east, had no knowledge of anything
happening in the western half. I therefore attached no significance to
the hurrying steps of a policeman in front of me, but was a little
surprised to see him pick his way almost on tiptoe between the vans--yet
not sufficiently surprised to anticipate drama.
But the drama was there, awaiting me, on the other side of the vans, and
the policeman--this being London drama--was naturally one of the
performers. For there never was a street play yet--comedy, tragedy, or
farce--without a policeman in the cast. It is a convention to say--as
every one has in his time said and will say again--that a policeman is
never there when he is wanted; but that is true only in the dull sense:
what we mean is that the policeman is never there before the curtain
rises, or, in other words, in time to prevent the performance
altogether. How tame if he were! As a matter of fact, by delaying his
arrival until the affair is in good train he takes his proper part as a
London entertainer; that is to say, he is there when he is
wanted--wanted to complete the show.
It was thus on the present occasion.
On passing the vans I was suddenly aware that the curtain had risen; for
on the south pavement were some fifteen or twenty people watching two
women at the house opposite, one of whom, a young one in a long brown
overcoat, was trying to get past the half-opened door, while the other,
an older one, in black, repulsed her from within. Just as I arrived the
policeman darted from between the vans, seized the young woman's arm,
and said, "That's enough of that. You come along with me." Her
reluctance was intense, but she did not resist; in fact, she had about
her a suggestion of having expected it.
One of the spectators remarked, "Quite time, too"; another added, "She
was arstin' for it." The other woman disappeared into the house, and we
all began to move in a westward direction.